160 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



necessarily the best kinds that can be brought 

 with profit on the market. Thus Gilpin says of 

 the maple, 'Its wood is of little value, and it 

 is therefore rarely suffered to increase ' ; while 

 Cobbett, in a passage very characteristic of his 

 general style, says, * It is mere brushwood; and 

 of no more use as a tree, than the poppies, or 

 wild parsnip, or wild carrot, are as cattle-food. 

 Our Maple is a weed of the woods, and we burn 

 it, because we know not what else to do with it. 

 . . . The timber of our Sycamore is white and 

 soft, and not valuable by any means.* 



Fashion, shaped no doubt by necessity, has 

 again swung back to the good opinion of the 

 wood of both maple and sycamore held two 

 hundred and fifty years ago. Sycamores of large 

 size and good growth can be sold at prices 

 running up to over two shillings a cubic foot, 

 and much the same price could be obtained for 

 maple if large supplies of it were available. 

 And the capacity of both of these excellent 

 timber trees for coming up as 'a weed of the 

 woods' gives the clearest indication possible 

 that their cultivation should be encouraged as 

 largely as may be practicable in copses and high- 



